The Blade Itself (39 page)

“I have developed a machine for—”

“My acids—”

“My alloys—”

“The mysteries of the human body—”

Glokta cut them off. “Actually, it is in the area of… I suppose you would call them explosive substances, that I am currently taking a particular interest—”

The Adeptus Chemical jumped from his seat. “That would be my province!” he cried, staring in triumph at his colleagues. “I have samples! I have examples! Please follow me, Inquisitor!” And he tossed his cutlery onto his plate and set off towards one of the doors.

Saurizin’s laboratory was precisely as one would have expected, almost down to the last detail. A long room with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, blackened in places with circles and streaks of soot. Shelves covered most of the wall-space, brimming with a confusion of boxes, jars, bottles, each filled with its own powders, fluids, rods of strange metal. There was no apparent order to the positions of the various containers, and most had no labels.
Organisation does not appear to be a priority.

The benches in the middle of the room were even more confused, covered in towering constructions of glass and old brown copper: tubes, flasks and dishes, lamps—one with a naked flame burning. All gave the appearance of being ready at any moment to collapse, dousing anyone unfortunate enough to stand nearby with lethal, boiling poisons.

The Adeptus Chemical rummaged in amongst this mess like a mole in its warren. “Now then,” he mumbled to himself, pulling at his dirty beard with one hand, “blasting powders are somewhere here…”

Glokta limped into the room after him, glancing suspiciously around at the mess of tubing that covered every surface. He wrinkled his nose. There was a revolting, acrid smell to the place.

“Here it is!” crowed the Adeptus, brandishing a dusty jar half-full of black granules. He cleared a space on one of the benches, shoving the clinking and clanking glass and metal out of the way with a sweep of his meaty forearm. “This stuff is terribly rare, you know, Inquisitor, terribly rare!” He pulled out the stopper and tipped a line of black powder onto the wooden bench. “Few men have been fortunate enough to see this stuff in action! Very few! And you are about to become one of them!”

Glokta took a cautious step back, the size of the ragged hole in the wall of the Tower of Chains still fresh in his mind. “We are safe, I hope, at this distance?”

“Absolutely,” murmured Saurizin, gingerly holding a burning taper out at arm’s length and touching it to one end of the line of powder. “There is no danger whatso—”

There was a sharp pop and a shower of white sparks. The Adeptus Chemical leaped back, nearly blundering into Glokta and dropping his lighted taper on the floor. There was another pop, louder, more sparks. A foul-smelling smoke began to fill the laboratory. There was a bright flash and a loud bang, a weak fizzling, and that was all.

Saurizin flapped the long sleeve of his gown in front of his face, trying to clear the thick smoke that had now thrown the whole chamber into gloom. “Impressive, eh, Inquisitor?” he asked, before dissolving into a fit of coughing.

Not really.
Glokta ground the still-flaming taper out under his boot and stepped through the murk towards the bench. He brushed aside a quantity of grey ash with the side of his hand. There was a long, black burn on the surface of the wood, but nothing more. The foul-smelling fumes were indeed the most impressive effect, already clawing at the back of Glokta’s throat. “It certainly produces a great deal of smoke,” he croaked.

“It does,” coughed the Adeptus proudly, “and reeks to high heaven.”

Glokta stared at that blackened smear on the bench. “If one had a large enough quantity of this powder, could it be used to, say, knock a hole through a wall?”

“Possibly… if one could accumulate a large enough quantity, who knows what could be done? As far as I know no one has ever tried.”

“A wall, say, four feet thick?”

The Adeptus frowned. “Perhaps, but you’d need barrels of the stuff! Barrels! There isn’t that much in the whole Union, and the cost, even if it could be found, would be colossal! Please understand, Inquisitor, that the components must be imported from the distant south of Kanta, and are rarities even there. I would be happy to look into the possibility, of course, but I would need considerable funding—”

“Thank you again for your time.” Glokta turned and began to limp through the thinning smoke towards the door.

“I have made some significant progress with acids recently!” cried the Adeptus, voice cracking. “You really should see those as well!” He took a shuddering breath. “Tell the Arch Lector… significant progress!” He dissolved into another fit of coughing, and Glokta shut the door tightly behind him.

A waste of my time. Our Bayaz could not have smuggled barrels of powder into that room. Even then, how much smoke, how great a smell would it have made? A waste of my time.

Silber was lurking in the hallway outside. “Is there anything else that we can show you, Inquisitor?”

Glokta paused for a moment. “Does anyone here know anything about magic?”

The Administrator’s jaw muscles clenched. “A joke of course. Perhaps—”

“Magic, I said. “

Silber narrowed his eyes. “You must understand that we are a scientific institution. The practice of magic, so called, would be most… inappropriate.”

Glokta frowned at the man.
I’m not asking you to get your wand out, fool.
“From a historical standpoint,” he snapped, “the Magi, and so on. Bayaz!”

“Ah, from a historical standpoint, I see.” Silber’s taut face relaxed slightly. “Our library contains a wide range of ancient texts, some of them dating back to the period when magic was considered… less remarkable.”

“Who can assist me?”

The Administrator raised his brows. “I am afraid that the Adeptus Historical is, ah, something of a relic.”

“I need to speak with him, not fence with him.”

“Of course, Inquisitor, this way.”

Glokta grabbed the handle of an ancient-looking door, studded with black rivets, began to turn it. He felt Silber seize his arm.

“No!” he snapped, guiding Glokta away down a corridor beside. “The stacks are down here.”

The Adeptus Historical seemed indeed to be a part of ancient history himself. His face was a mask of lined and sagging half-transparent skin. Sparse hairs, snowy white, stuck unkempt from his head. There were only a quarter as many as there should have been, but each was four times longer than you would expect, hence his eyebrows were thin, yet sprouted out to impressive length in all directions, like the whiskers of a cat. His mouth hung slack, weak, and toothless, hands were withered gloves, several sizes too big. Only his eyes showed any trace of life, peering up at Glokta and the administrator as they approached.

“Visitors, is it?” croaked the old man, apparently talking to a large black crow perched on his desk.

“This is Inquisitor Glokta!” bellowed the Administrator, leaning down towards the old man’s ear.

“Glokta?”

“From the Arch Lector!”

“Is it?” The Adeptus Historical squinted up with his ancient eyes.

“He’s somewhat deaf,” Silber murmured, “but no one knows these books like he does.” He thought about it for a moment, peering round at the endless stacks, disappearing into the gloom. “No one else knows these books at all.”

“Thank you,” said Glokta. The Administrator nodded and strode off towards the stairs. Glokta took a step towards the old man and the crow leaped from the table and scrambled into the air, shedding feathers, flapping madly around the ceiling. Glokta hobbled painfully back.
I was sure the damn thing was stuffed.
He watched it suspiciously until it clattered to a halt on top of one of the shelves and perched there motionless, staring at him with its beady yellow eyes.

Glokta pulled out a chair and dropped into it. “I need to know about Bayaz.”

“Bayaz,” muttered the ancient Adeptus. “The first letter in the alphabet of the old tongue, of course.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“The world’s brimming full of what you don’t know, young man.” The bird gave a sudden harsh caw, horribly loud in the dusty silence of the stacks. “Brimming full.”

“Then let’s begin my education. It’s the man Bayaz, I need to know about. The First of the Magi.”

“Bayaz. The name great Juvens gave to his first apprentice. One letter, one name. First apprentice, first letter of the alphabet, you understand?”

“I’m just about keeping up. Did he really exist?”

The ancient Adeptus scowled. “Unquestionably. Did you not have a tutor as a young man?”

“I did, unfortunately.”

“Did he not teach you history?”

“He tried, but my mind was on fencing and girls.”

“Ah. I lost interest in such things a long time ago.”

“So did I. Let us return to Bayaz.”

The old man sighed. “Long ago, before there was a Union, Midderland was made of many petty kingdoms, often at war with one another, rising and falling with the passing years. One of these was ruled by a man called Harod, later to become Harod the Great. You’ve heard of him, I assume?”

“Of course.”

“Bayaz came to Harod’s throne room, and promised to make him King of all Midderland if he did as he was told. Harod, being young and headstrong, did not believe him, but Bayaz broke the long table with his Art.”

“Magic, eh?”

“So the story goes. Harod was impressed—”

“Understandable.”

“—and he agreed to accept the advice of the Magus—”

“Which was?”

“To make his capital here, in Adua. To make peace with certain neighbours, war with others, and when and how to do it.” The old man squinted across at Glokta. “Are you telling this story or am I?”

“You are.”
And you’re taking your time about it.

“Bayaz was good as his word. In time Midderland was unified, Harod became its first High King, the Union was born.”

“Then what?”

“Bayaz served as Harod’s chief counsellor. Our laws and statutes, the very structure of our government, all are said to be his inventions, little changed since those ancient days. He established the Councils, Closed and Open, he formed the Inquisition. On Harod’s death he left the Union, promising one day to return.”

“I see. How much of this is true, do you think?”

“Hard to say. Magus? Wizard? Magician?” The old man looked at the flickering candle flame. “To a savage, that candle might be magic. It’s a fine line indeed, between magic and trickery, eh? But this Bayaz was a cunning mind in his day, that’s a fact.”

This is all useless.
“What about before?”

“Before what?”

“Before the Union. Before Harod.”

The old man shrugged. “Record-keeping was hardly a priority during the dark ages. The whole world was in chaos after the war between Juvens and his brother Kanedias—”

“Kanedias? The Master Maker?”

“Aye.”

Kanedias. He stares down from the walls of my little room in the cellars beneath Severard’s charming town house. Juvens dead, his eleven apprentices, the Magi, marching to avenge him. I know this tale.

“Kanedias,” murmured Glokta, the image of that dark figure with the flames behind clear in his mind. “The Master Maker. Was he real?”

“Hard to say. He’s in the ground between myth and history, I suppose. Probably there’s some grain of truth in it. Someone must have built that big bloody tower, eh?”

“Tower?”

“The House of the Maker!” The old man gestured at the room around them. “And they say he built all this as well.”

“What, this library?”

The old man laughed. “The whole Agriont, or at least the rock on which it stands. The University too. He built it, appointed the first Adepti to help him with his works, whatever they were, to look into the nature of things. We here are the Maker’s disciples, yes, though I doubt they know it upstairs. He is gone but the work continues, eh?”

“After a fashion. Where did he go?”

“Hah. Dead. Your friend Bayaz killed him.”

Glokta raised an eyebrow. “Did he really?”

“So the story goes. Have you not read
The Fall of the Master Maker
?”

“That rubbish? I thought it was all invention.”

“So it is. Sensational claptrap, but based on writings from the time.”

“Writings? Such things survive?”

The old man narrowed his eyes. “Some.”

“Some? You have them here?”

“One in particular.”

Glokta fixed the old man with his eye. “Bring it to me.”

The ancient paper crackled as the Adeptus Historical carefully unrolled the scroll and spread it out on the table. The parchment was yellow and crumpled, edges rough with age, scrawled with a dense script: strange characters, utterly unintelligible to Glokta’s eye.